


From Death She Casts Her Spell

by fictorium (orphan_account)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 10:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So basically this is an angsty one-shot with character death. I’m not really sure where it came from, other than a brief wondering of why we’re all so quick to kill off Emma and not Regina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Death She Casts Her Spell

Emma holds the brass urn in both hands, and sighs.

She doesn’t wait for a comforting hand on her shoulder, or a kindly word, because neither is going to come. The funeral director coughs quietly; he’s the only other person in the room. When Emma doesn’t raise her head, she hears him open the door and slip away.

It’s only then, in the silence of the white room bathed in sunshine (they should do these things in basements, they should do this in the dark) that Emma finally allows her tears to fall.

*

Henry’s waiting when she gets home, longer legs draped over the edge of the sofa, tension in every bounce of his foot.

“Is that her?” He asks, nodding towards the box that Emma carries. She nods, and he screws up his face in an emotion she doesn’t understand. “When are you doing it?” is his next question, and Emma has to brace herself before she can speak.

“Tomorrow,” she says, her voice rasping from a day without use. “Early.”

*

Emma can’t find the strength to let herself fall asleep. Instead she plays infomercials all night on the crappy TV in her bedroom, turned down low enough that the crackle of the static drowns out the words.

She listens to the noises of the house rattle and fade outside, but apart from one brief knock (David—James, she can tell from the timidity of the sound) nobody disturbs her.

There’s a string of pearls in the pocket of her black leather jacket. Nobody else came with her to pick out the clothes for the casket, and so Emma had done the best she could. She’d kept the pearls on impulse, wrapping them around her knuckles instead of fastening them around Regina’s (cold, so cold) neck.

(It hurts a little—a lot—but Emma remembers the last time Regina wore this particular necklace, and how it looked bouncing against her throat as she rode Emma’s fingers, the curse words smothered as Regina bit down on her bottom lip. Emma wills her brain to stop replaying it, because it’s the most beautiful and the most terrible thing mind has ever done to her.)

Emma pulls the string of pearls from the pocket now, running them between her fingers as she sits in the middle of her bed. The words to the prayers are fumbled, forgotten, but Emma says a full rosary anyway. She doesn’t believe in God, but she didn’t believe in magic and fairytales either; sometimes it doesn’t pay to be too sure.

*

They’re waiting for her when she tries to slip out just after dawn.

There’s a sense that nobody slept, not really, and tired eyes meet over the kitchen table that’s already hosted some spectacular family arguments. Emma notices that nobody is dressed in black but her, it’s the kind of slight Regina would have railed against for days. 

“If you’re going to try to stop me—” Emma begins, her mouth almost too tired to form the words.

“We want to come with you,” Snow says carefully, and Emma wonders how she ever mistook this woman for a feeble teacher. “You shouldn’t do this alone.”

“I want to,” Henry says quietly, with a hand from each grandparent resting on his shoulders. “She was my mom.”

“Yes, Henry,” Emma sighs, releasing a long year of lectures unheeded and lessons unlearned in one breath. “She was.”

*

Emma’s kneeling under the apple tree, ready to open the urn, when Snow kneels down beside her.

“I know that you loved her,” Emma’s mother admits, far too late. “I’m sorry.”

“Emma,” Henry says, as he kneels on her other side. “I don’t want us to be mad at each other anymore.”

“I’m not mad at you, Henry,” Emma says, pushing an ineffectual shoulder once more against the tide of his wilful, childish ignorance. “I just wish you’d given me a chance to save her.”

“It was too late when I found her,” Henry admits, his words a dark shadow over the otherwise cloudless day. “She was still awake, and she said she loved me, but the sword was…”

“She hurt a lot of people,” Snow continues. “We couldn’t control a whole town of angry people forever. We put Jefferson in prison, didn’t we?”

“It’s not enough,” Emma confesses, dropping her chin to her chest and choking back the sob. “Everything she took from you, you all got it back,” she continues. “Regina and I were the only ones who lost something for good.”

“We should scatter the ashes,” James says, his tone firm as he stands over them. “It’s time.”

Emma bites her lip, fights the tears a moment longer, and does as he says. It’s almost funny how her years of resisting authority crumble in the face of her actual parents; Emma isn’t sure she’ll ever find anything funny again.

The gray ashes form a perfect circle as she pours, and she feels the hugs of Snow and Henry on each side, but she melts into neither.

*

It’s only later that night, when they’ve left her alone (again, without her having to ask) that Emma finally says it. She wraps the pearls around her fingers, closes her eyes and leans her forehead against the cool glass in the window.

“Goodbye, Regina,” she whispers. She waits, hopes for magic or a miracle, but there’s no one to say anything back.


End file.
